It has been a really long time since I have written a reflective learning blog, which has now been nearly replaced by our tragedy unit. However, this short break has not been void, but has been filled with a handful of learning opportunities. One thing I would like to touch on happens to be about tragedy, and how reading certain texts has affected my definition of the genre. Before we jumped into one of our main texts, we read an article about tragedy and how it pertains to the modern man. According to this text, tragedies happen to have a lot of heroes, which is a characteristic that most mainstream media lacks. This lack has caused a downward spiral for the popularity in tragedy. At first, I personally did not have heroes within my definition of tragedy; my definition originally was simply "A genre which includes a focus on human suffering." But after reading the article, it makes sense as to why heroes are included in most tragedy. Heroes, to most people, are individuals who try their hardest to save the day and aren't typically associated with being flawed. I think this is where the tragedy comes in. Heroes, human or not, also have flaws that can limit them in achieving their end goal. Take Oedipus for example. In the story of Oedipus, he was looked up to by the people, for he had solved problems in the past. However, as reviled by the story, Oedipus has had a broken past, having killed his father and marrying his mother. Not only did this affect his mother, and the townspeople, it tragically affected his daughters, who will now be teased about their family's inbreeding. Tragedy at it's finest. Perhaps this isn't how I was meant to process things, but it goes without saying that I have learned and shaped my definition of what tragedy is. It's quite interesting and these past few weeks haven't gone to waste.
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November 2017
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